At the Library

Only the Animals

"The souls of ten animals caught up in human conflicts over the last century, and connected to both famous and little-known writers in surprising ways, tell their astonishing stories of life and death"-- Provided by publisher.

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A series of short stories that riff on animals and events in literary fiction. The book is replete with literary in-jokes (many of which sailed right over my head). It was very clever, but I felt rather excluded by it.

In this clever, quirky book Ceridwen Dovey takes us into the minds of animals which have died in situations of human conflict and allows them to tell their stories in their own words. In doing so, she shines a light on the way animals have been both treasured and exploited by humans throughout history. The individual stories are sometimes sad, sometimes amusing but never twee and always give plenty of food for thought.

These extended points of view are just an excuse for other angles on humans (in historical situations)...the stories are full of projection onto animals and they tell us nothing at all that accepts and respects the otherness and uniqueness of animals as creatures different from ourselves.

I thought this was a wonderful, well-written and highly creative book. Stories from the point of view of animals can often be twee, but this wasn't twee in the slightest. As the back of the book says, perhaps only the animals can tell us what it is like to be human.